Re: Wrecking as a result of starvation

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>]

On Wed, 2004-05-26 at 22:29, Jim Kingdon wrote: 
> > At present, units that starve to death simply vanish.  I would
> > prefer that they wreck (when wrecking is possible) instead.
> 
> I haven't read the patch, but this idea sounds good to me.  I'm not
> aware of any reason why wrecking would be wrong.

I seem to recall that while I was writing space-civ.g, I noticed that a
civilization would vanish if it starved (as per
unit-consumption-per-size), rather than wreck.

It doesn't look like this patch would fix the space-civ.g bug, but I
suspect that the bug will eventually re-surface in someone else's
project, if not fixed.


Sounds like, at present, the following changes to the wrecking code may
be called for:

1. wrecked-type should be changed into a table, so that what a unit
wrecks into depends on what destroys it.  For example, a human slain by
a vampire should rise as a vampire, but that doesn't mean that every
human slain by anything should rise as a vampire!
2. Similarly, a game designer might want to set up a game so that what
happens when a unit starves depends on what material it runs out of.

(I'm not sure how a single table would handle destruction in combat
*and* other factors such as starvation.  Perhaps two tables, one for
destruction by particular units and one for starvation by particular
materials, plus several unit properties, e.g. "wrecked-type-if-starved",
"wrecked-type-if-atrophied", etc.)

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

The beauty of a pun is in the "Oy!" of the beholder.